Several studies have illustrated the integral role of the polysemic nature of the cuneiform script, and Sumerian-Akkadian bilingualism, to Mesopotamian scholarship. However, such studies are typically concerned with commentaries, or literary and lexical texts dating to the first millennium bc. This book is the most in-depth treatment of the topic to date with regard to the Old Babylonian (OB) period.
The first part of the book examines concepts and techniques of translation and multilingualism in Mesopotamian scholarship, with a particular focus on Advanced Lexical Education (ALE). Utilizing the four-stage model of the primary phase of the OB curriculum, ALE belongs to stage three, followed by model contracts and proverbs; relevant texts include Ea, Lu, Izi, Kagal, Nigga, Diri, and metrology. The second part of the book features a full edition of the unilingual version of Izi from OB Nippur, to which are appended summaries of the other OB and later versions of Izi. A second appendix compiles Akkadian glosses to the unilingual version of Izi from OB Nippur.
The edition, presented in score format, and including a detailed commentary, includes about 50 previously unpublished manuscripts. It is a welcome update to the previous treatment by M. Civil (1971). Hand copies are not included; however, the author has collated most of the manuscripts, and the volume includes a selection of photographs. Tablets belonging to the Hilprecht-Sammlung (Jena) are included in the edition, but will be fully published in a forthcoming volume by the author. Crisostomo's edition should be read in conjunction with its digital version (www.oracc.org/dcclt/Q000050), which includes links to photographs of most of the relevant tablets. The online digital photographs in this version are an important resource, although many of them are not of sufficient quality to be able to verify a reading.
Crisostomo's book builds on recent studies of lexical texts, which emphasize their role in scribal education and scholarship, together with the social and cultural context in which they were produced. This approach is exemplified by N. Veldhuis, History of the Cuneiform Lexical Tradition (Münster, 2014). Crisostomo's book examines ALE as a form of scholarship through which scribes legitimated and perpetuated their social and cultural status. The author's characterization of OB scribal education, and ALE in particular, as insular, self-referential, and motivated by scholarly concerns, is suggested by several factors. For example, OB Izi contains nearly 200 lemmata found nowhere outside the lexical tradition, and another 400 lemmata known only from Sumerian literature (p. 46). In addition, nearly 40 per cent of the legible correspondences between a Sumerian entry and its Akkadian gloss in OB Izi go beyond the simple transference of semantic meaning (p. 12).
Crisostomo considers Akkadian translation as only one example amongst many, of “analogical hermeneutics”. As illustrated by the author, such analogical relationships are also apparent from the order and arrangement of lexical lists, where the succession of entries is determined by the association of sign-shapes, phonological characteristics, or semantic themes. Some Akkadian glosses in OB Izi are the result of similar analogical techniques. For example, the equation between Akkadian upumtum “flour” and Sumerian aš is due to the association between the phonetically similar éš “flour” (p. 136). Akkadian ana “to, for” is also equated with Sumerian aš, representing the Sumerian terminative postposition /še/, which is often written -aš (p. 160). According to Crisostomo's lucid and original characterization of analogical techniques in ALE (pp. 152–66), the former is an example of “phonological substitution,” and the latter is “grammatical derivation”. Other techniques include “semantic extension”, “morphological substitution”, “graphic extension”, “iconic representation”, and “antonymic translation”.
Crisostomo's book is focused on the Akkadian glosses to OB Izi, not the bilingual version of this list. The author argues that, due to the variations amongst such glosses, they are not a stable component of the composition; instead, they provide the freedom for scribes to practise interlingual associations (pp. 125–7). It is worth pointing out that previous scholars have often interpreted such glosses as mere aids for the understanding of Sumerian (p. 130). The author also departs from previous scholarship by his assertion that OB education was concerned not only with the acquisition of Sumerian, but also bilingual analogical hermeneutics (pp. 144–52).
Crisostomo's overall approach may be contrasted with another recent study of Mesopotamian scholarly practice, M. Van De Mieroop, Philosophy before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia (Princeton, 2016). Van De Mieroop, like Crisostomo, argues that the Babylonians utilized the writing system itself as a vehicle for scholastic exploration. However, as highlighted by Crisostomo (pp. 144, 174–9), Van De Mieroop views such scholastic exploration as a search for meaning and truth. This contrasts with Crisostomo's view that, in both OB lexical texts and later commentaries, scholars did not aim to determine singular truths; instead, they aimed to explore multiple readings and possibilities of the writing system. According to the author, the motivations for practising such techniques can be found in the social and cultural contexts of OB education.
The question of meaning and motivation in the use of analogical techniques in OB scholarship is difficult. OB texts do not normally explicate themselves, and there was certainly an oral aspect of scholarship for which no trace has remained in the written record. It is notable that first millennium bc commentaries utilize many of the same analogical techniques as in the OB period. One cannot assume that the same motivation and purpose necessarily applies to the use of analogical techniques in both OB lexical texts and first millennium commentaries. However, it seems clear that Mesopotamian scholars of the first millennium BC did indeed seek to establish the single, logical and consistent meaning of the base text. Indeed, in the case of commentaries, the inclusion of multiple possibilities probably does not suggest that scholars considered them to be of equal value; instead, it reflects the variety of sources with which scholars worked (U. Gabbay, The Exegetical Terminology of Akkadian Commentaries, Leiden: Brill, 2016, 8–9, 74–83).
This book is an important, innovative contribution to the field of OB education, as well as Mesopotamian intellectual history.
